Central Asia news

The Russian Prosecutor General's Office resolved to extradite the first of the so called Ivanovo Uzbeks

Memorial Human Rights Center reports that the Russian Prosecutor General's Office ordered extradition of Mamirjon Tashtemirov, a citizen of Kyrgyzstan. Arrested together with 12 citizens of Uzbekistan, Tashtemirov is to be extradited from Detention Cell No 1, Ivanovo, to Uzbekistan on the request from the Uzbek authorities that want the group known as the Ivanovo Uzbeks on fabricated charges of participation in the armed rebellion in Andijan in May 2005.

The news of the impending extradition was broken on July 28 when the Oktyabrsky Court of Ivanovo was contemplating a complaint of Tashtemirov's lawyer Irina Sokolova against the illegal keeping of her charge behind the bars.

The prosecution provided the resolution of the Prosecutor General's Office dated July 27, 2006, signed by Senior Deputy Prosecutor General Alexander Buksman on extradition of Tashtemirov of Kyrgyzstan to the law enforcement agencies of the Republic of Uzbekistan.

Between July 12 and 26, the Ivanovo Regional Court backed the previous decision of the Federal Service of Immigration to deny all 13 Ivanovo prisoners the status of political refugees.

The Federal Service of Immigration, Prosecutor General's Office, and court therefore stand in violation of the order from the UN High Commissar for Refugees to grant the Ivanovo Uzbeks international protection and of Article 33 of the UN Convention 1951 "On the status of refugees" that bans extradition of such persons.

Sokolova intends to battle the extradition decision in court. Protocols of the court meeting today will be forwarded to Strasbourg where the European Court for Human Rights registered the Ivanovo Uzbeks' pleas for suspension of extradition procedures on January 18, 2006.